Content-type: text/html Ray Manning

Tuesday, September 7, 2004 8:58 PM

September Start


I'm enthused to be approaching September as I recall how good last years' "Serious September" was for working out. The week starts out with a Monday session with the weights, a Tuesday afternoon run near 5 miles, and a Wednesday morning early walk followed by a session with the weights. A man in my neighborhood (not really a neighbor) and I start talking at 5:55 am on Wednesday as he's preparing his 17 year old dog for a walk - we draw parallels between the old age and hip problems of his dog and Nopester (who has now been gone for 7 months and 1 day).

Thursday and Friday continue with good workouts (a run on Thursday and a good session with the weights on Friday) and frustrating days at work as I try to fix other peoples' problems. On Friday I leave a bit early to lift weights, mow and edge the lawn, and do the laundry. After dinner Person C_T calls and agrees to come over to watch a movie. We go rent "Sylvia" which is loosely based upon a poet's life and bake chocolate chip cookies for the movie. The movie is depressing as the poet finally successfully commits suicide in the end. Person C_T and I discuss the movie and then move on to other things before we both lay down for sleep at 2am on Saturday morning.

On Saturday I get out for a reasonable aquarium ride after Person C_T leaves for a wedding near 10 am. The rest of the daylight hours are spent doing low key tasks around the house, cleaning up lots of paperwork, cleaning the house, and getting out for a 5 mile run.

Later I'm off to Pick up Person J_VKPI at his new apartment in Glendale for a night of clubbing. Person J_VKPI is on time and I congratulate him on this. The club is crowded, the music is pretty good, and their are a number of friends and acquaintances around. I'm seeing Person C_T, who cannot join us tonight, so I refuse all offers before they become offers. Though I note quite a few offers being prepared. Becauase we haven't gone out for a while, we stay out a bit later than usual and we don't leave the club until 2:10 am on Sunday morning. The sidewalk outside the club is absolutely packed as a number of clubs do not have the afterhours parties. But we wind our way through the club and I drop Person J_VKPI off and I'm laying down for sleep at 3:35 am.

On Sunday I'm up after 7 am to go for the aquarium ride, read the newspaper, and watch the Portuguese MotoGP race. The results are good with Valentino Rossi dominating on his Yamaha M1. Later, after calls from Person C_T and Person T_U, I get out for more than an hour of inline skating on this day that peaks at 102 degrees in Long Beach. The rest of the day is spent watching racing, reading the newspaper, and relaxing. I'm glad that I have air conditioning at home.

On Monday I get out for the aquarium ride, read the newspaper, skate for more than an hour near the ocean, and then relax in the early afternoon. Later I get in a good session with the weights before heading off to the video store to rent a DVD of a movie title that I saw the other day, "Suicide Club". Seeing that "Sylvia" ended with the lead poet committing suicide, this movie seems appropriate to watch. It's about a rash of suicides by young teenage girls in Tokyo (in Japanese and subtitled in English). A number of times the story gets into a good rhythym and then, suddenly, changes to something bizarre and unpredictable. At the end I don't quite know the point of the movie, but at least it took me back to Tokyo for about 90 minutes.

I get to bed a bit after 10 pm as I finally find an mp3 of a great techno/trance song that I've wanted for a while. It's going to be a productive Tuesday at Norhtrup Grumman with this song playing!